Time Is A Mirror, Warped And Rotting
by Songs for a Solstice
Summary: John falls and Jim rises as Sherlock watches, helpless. John/Moriarty, side pairing Sherlock/John. Sherlock survived Reichenbach, but so did Jim; leaving John as a whole new game and prize in one.
1. When Yesterday Dies

**Chapter Summary: When it comes down to it, John's not really that surprised that Sherlock lost. Because Sherlock didn't have much of a heart, but he had enough for Moriarty to burn till it crumbled into ashes and shattered dreams.**

**A/N: this is me collating a few stories in the same 'verse into one fic. Each part will be from a different character's POV.**

* * *

He stays silent the first time; doesn't wince in pain or gasp in agony as too-dry fingers thrust roughly into him, followed too quickly by Moriarty's cock. Somehow, his eyes even manage to stay open, light dim and yet searing even when the other man has tired of biting into his neck and nipping at his lips (and it hurts, dear God it _hurts_.)

_Fight me. I dare you. It's not you who's gonna die if you do, anyway_, Moriarty had whispered into his ear gently , and John wonders if it's possible to perform surgery on himself (lie himself down on the operating table and raise that knife) and cut his own heart out (the parts that didn't die with Sherlock, anyway).

John does fight him, but in the only way he can; he forces his body to relax, remembers not to let his facial muscles twitch, even when Moriarty comes inside of him with a satisfied grunt.

Afterwards, he determinedly takes the shortest shower he can (doesn't scour his skin with bleach, trying to cleanse something that'll never be clean again), and he sits on the couch for that evening's episode of Doctor Who.

He can do this.

* * *

Moriarty drags him into Sherlock's bedroom after four weeks of John lying limp on his stomach on the couch, of scrubbing at a stain for longer and longer, every time.

He digs a knife into his naked thigh, standing in the kitchen in nothing but his underwear after a shower that's left his skin red and raw; for thinking, as Moriarty's chest pressed against his back and a hand wrapped around his cock, that anything would be worth this stopping; Mrs Hudson, _anything_.

The blood flows sluggish, and he feels ashamed, because he's becoming his own patient now; weak, pathetic, helpless, everything Sherlock disdained till the day he died.

_But Sherlock isn't here anymore_.

* * *

Next visit, while John's being stripped, slow and methodical in his living room, Moriarty notices the knife wound, still scarring over.

He doesn't say anything; just looks up at John, and there's something in his gaze that, briefly, causes something like confusion in his mind.

Moriarty fucks him slowly, in his own bed, dragging an orgasm out of him with a torturous meticulousness that somehow leaves him feeling more violated than ever.

* * *

He determines after that to play resigned, reluctant but willing; to not be the victim even more than his circumstances are forcing him to be.

This time, it's not an indeterminate flicker in Moriarty's expression that John receives; it's disappointment that hardens the psychopath's gaze, and the sinking realisation that John is going to be sore for the next week even as he comes violently from the almost viciously efficient slide of Moriarty's hand over areas of his body he didn't know were sensitive.

"I see right through you, Johnny m'boy," Moriarty tells him, hovering over John as he trembles in the aftermath of his climax, before pulling out and walking out.

Moments later, the door slams shut.

John doesn't realise till much later that the other man was still hard when he left.

* * *

The eleventh time (a Tuesday evening, like clockwork, every week), he's resigned for real. It comes almost as a relief, an exhale releasing a breath that's been held in too long for comfort, when arms wrap around his waist as he's reaching out for the kettle.

"Hello, Johnny dear," Moriarty murmurs, teeth brushing at the nape of his skull.

He doesn't bother repressing the shiver of pleasure. "Hello," he replies calmly, watching the stream of steaming water from kettle to mug (cracked in the corner from that time Sherlock accidentally knocked it to the tiles while in the process of de-braining the oven).

John feels the other man tense behind him, feels nothing but grim satisfaction at, for once, being _unexpected_; prolongs the feeling, when he turns in Moriarty's arms to face him and, raising one trembling hand, pulls the person he hates most in the world down into a kiss, all teeth and tongue and blood and _Ican'tdothisanymore_.

* * *

He waits in the bed now, every Tuesday, as he gives more of himself to Moriarty.

_Jim_, the man insists, and it's not just Tuesdays now; anything he can get, anything to _forget_, anything to stop him from betraying Sherlock one more time and signing Mrs Hudson's death warrant when he can't stay alive any longer.

* * *

"Move in with me," Jim says, smiling as he props himself up on an elbow to smile down at John's face.

_Alright_, he agrees, because it's been two years, nine months and eighteen days and Sherlock isn't coming back.

* * *

**Next part'll be up later today or tomorrow.**


	2. Today's A Sunburst (The Heart Of A Man)

**Chapter Summary: It starts as a final victory march, a way to remind Jim of the fact that he's won (and hollow or not, victory is victory and these are his spoils).  
It doesn't end, because Jim doesn't need Sherlock anymore when John is more than enough. (Jim's POV of Chapter 1.)**

* * *

Curiosity is what drags Jim from the opulence of his hotel room to 221B Baker Street; it's what urges him to call Moran, order the snipers to be ready though he knows he's not going to need them. John is predictable, after all; merely human, no sociopathic, reluctant angel.

He's merely a crippled soul, unable to hide the grimaces of pain as Jim knees his legs further apart, deliberately brushing against that phantom injury of his that probably returned the moment he saw Sherlock jump.

_Is this what Sherlock used to do to you? _he asks, though he knows the answer from the tightness around his fingers, the deliberate relaxation of John's limbs (ever the soldier, ever _predictable_, and there's something frustrating about this because what could Sherlock find in this wretched, broken man that wasn't sex or intellect or anything more than another average drone?) and somehow he can't stop himself from pushing in slightly harder, from getting lost in annoyance and the inability to understand _why him_? – from abandoning his plans to force John to orgasm, slowly and torturously.

Because he's coming earlier than he thought he would, walking out of the apartment with a barely faltering _till next time, sweetie_.

Jim realises halfway through the word _time _that there wasn't going to _be _a next time. He was here as a gesture, and the sex might not have been unexpected but it wasn't necessary. It wasn't _neat_, or at least wasn't messy in the cold, shattering way he's used to.

_Just once more_, he assures himself.

* * *

Jim uses Sherlock's old bedroom in a fit of petulance – partially inspired by the knowledge that Sherlock escaped a genuine plan by Jim to kill him (none of that nonsense with snipers and a rooftop, but what was _supposed _to be a meticulous, fool-proof plan. A whole town had been burned to ashes, and the only one who'd survived was that _goddamned man_. It'd been the biggest waste of resources in Jim's career.)

But, and he knows how to be honest with himself, there's something more than simple annoyance with someone who will, inevitably, lose to him.

It's the fifth week; the fifth week and the fifth time (Tuesday evening, as always, a regular routine) Jim finds himself ordering John to strip (and he does so with economical movements, brisk and efficient and almost hiding the slight tremor in his hands.)

The fifth and _nothing has changed. Nothing. _And while John's stoicism is cute, if dull, it's been eating at Jim in a way he doesn't quite understand, self-honesty or not.

This time, at least, he garners something; a violent tremble in the smaller body beneath him when he pushes John into the mattress. And there's something delicious about the barely-there glint of despair in the other man's eyes when, for the first time, Jim fucks him on his back instead of his stomach, timing the movement of his hand around John's cock so he comes just before Jim does, tightening around Jim in a way that's wonderfully convulsive and uncontrolled.

_Broken_, Jim thinks, mentally batting away the ridiculous shade of disappointment colouring his thoughts; too fast, far too fast, and just one more week to see if it's true (because if not, Jim's got better things to do than shatter a pawn.)

* * *

The next week, Jim strips John himself; and so it's he who uncovers the stab wound (_missed any major arteries and muscle groups, indicates medical training; 103 degree angle, self-inflicted; force, high levels of emotional stress; suicidal? No, placement of wound indicates sense of helplessness rather than suicidal tendencies_.)

And he should be glad, because this here is final proof that Sherlock has lost; that when he finally manages to destroy enough of Jim's empire to come back home (and Jim doesn't particularly care, because he's sick of Eurasia and thinking seriously of letting Sherlock do his thing and then starting afresh in South America or Australasia), he'll find one of the few things that matters to him permanently and irreversibly damaged.

Jim should be glad –

But he's _angry _(_mine, my toy, mine to break_)_, _burning furious with a cold rage that finds him looking up to meet John's eyes steadily; and John's eyes flicker with something that isn't resignation or determination or even despair.

It's _different_.

So Jim moves slowly, gently; lays John down on his own bed, not Sherlock's (because this time it isn't about Sherlock, and he'll deal with that rather troubling line of thought later) and, for the first time, spends more time touching John's body (tracing the scars on his chest, flicking a tongue over his nipples and forcing involuntary gasps of pleasure-shock from those soft lips) than he does actually fucking him.

He sees the confusion in John's eyes when he smiles and pulls out, dressing himself quickly and leaving as quietly as he comes.

It's surprisingly difficult to admit to himself that he prefers the confusion to the despair.

* * *

Later, Jim very deliberately doesn't think about the time that John lies pliant in his arms; not actively participating but passively accepting, mind disconnected from where he is, who he's with. He doesn't think about it because then he's really left with nothing to do other than set off a bomb in Iraq, or commission a train crash in Siberia, and it's really quite wasteful, doing that.

But remembering that – the eerie sensation of being faced with what was, essentially a life-size doll (till Jim turned his fury into ruthlessly and methodically pushing every single button of John's till the man was almost _begging_) – it makes him angry, even now. At the time, he barely managed to keep his voice steady enough to bite out his last retort – "_I see right through you, Johnny m'boy_".

John doesn't try it again, and even better, he doesn't return to passive resistance. Instead he hovers, disoriented and confused and _responsive_.

* * *

He thought that John breaking, finally, would release him from whatever he's trapped himself in – this addictive rush of predictability and spontaneity all in one body (is that how John got Sherlock? By just _being_?)

But when John actually relaxes into his grasp, turns and kisses him with blood and teeth and saliva, messy and unexpected and wonderful, Jim finds himself acknowledging one of a few rare instances where he has been wrong.

John might be broken, but it is _beautiful_; like he's seeing a soul, casing torn and ripped with a sun's light seeping through the cracks.

* * *

Jim's not sure who suggests that they meet more than once a week (because they meet, now, it's not Jim taking what he wants ever since John kissed him and more with a passionate, desperate enthusiasm). Perhaps it's a simultaneous decision.

Either way, Jim isn't complaining. He wants this, and John needs this.

Sherlock's got about seven months left by Jim's estimation. Knowing Sherlock, he'll be done in six.

* * *

"Move in with me," Jim suggests on an impulse – impulse, isn't that exciting? He never used to have these before, and he supposes that Sherlock probably didn't either, because the two of them are similar, so similar, at least in the ways it matters (intellect, wit, John).

He doesn't know why he asks, but he does know that it's been two years, nine months and eighteen days since Sherlock vanished. Jim knows that John doesn't give up (no matter what Sherlock said on that rooftop, John will never stop believing in him) but that he's given up on Sherlock being alive.

He knows that John is _his_, and that he likes to have what's his around him. Not safe, never safe because nothing is safe with Jim, but safe from everything except Jim.

When John nods, says "all right" with capitulation echoing from not just his mouth but his heart, his soul, Jim can't help but lean forwards and kiss him, long and deep.

* * *

**Next bit will be up soon (Sherlock's POV, but in 2 parts, one of which will explore Sherlock's return.)**


	3. Tomorrow You'll Weep

When Mycroft's caller I.D shows up on Sherlock's phone barely a week after he's left England – he's now in Liechtenstein, in a tiny village on the outskirts of Vaduz that's just invented running water – Sherlock doesn't answer.

About half a minute later he receives a text, and curses satellite phones.

_It's about John_. _Don't hang up.  
MH_

The next time his ringtone, movement 1 of Vivaldi's _Winter_, sings out, Sherlock cuts it off before the second note.

"What happened?"

Sherlock wishes later that he could have cut the call short, could have thrown the phone to ground and crushed it beneath his feet.

He'd told John once that he didn't bother with unnecessary information. And this is unnecessary; more than that, it's _irrelevant_. It won't inspire him to move faster or work harder (not when he's doing the best he can, more than he thought was possible even for him.)

But Sherlock also once told John that he didn't care. Not about people. Not about anyone.

Sherlock can lie to anyone, but he refuses to lie to himself.

* * *

Mycroft calls again while Sherlock's on the roof of a train, nursing second-degree burns and carefully not feeling guilt over the ten thousand who are dead now because he happened to walk into their town.

_I'm a fully-functioning sociopath- _LIE.

LIE.

_I don't care_.

LIE.

_Moriarty tried to kill me. Seriously tried to kill me._

TRUTH.

_He doesn't need amusement anymore-_

LIE.

_He's got something else to give it to him._

TRUTH.

"_It wasn't your fault_."

"Lie," Sherlock answers tonelessly; both about the fact that Sherlock signed the death warrants of ten thousand people, and about Moriarty having anal intercourse with Sherlock's former roommate on Sherlock's bed.

_Irrelevant_(TRUTH)_Idon'tcare_(LIE.)

He can almost feel Mycroft's shrug through the phone. "_Perhaps_."

"Definitely."

Mycroft sighs, a sigh that says _overworked, frustrated, reluctantly scared _with barely the most minute of tonal inflections differentiating it from_Sherlock's being a little twat again_. "_He's not going to leave John alone_."

"I know."

"_And it's not because of you anymore_."

"I know."

The train pulls into Haifa late in the afternoon, but Sherlock's long gone by now, stowed away in the back of a convoy truck that's just been cleared to cross over into Jordan.

_John_; it's a word, a single word that says too many other things that make Sherlock's head hurt. It won't go away, and so he rebuilds his mind palace around it, a throbbing ache that makes him restless to get off the truck, to do what he's got to do, to get back home before it's too late.

To tell John what he'd been foolish enough to think he could do later.

* * *

One of the cameras in 221B (that Mycroft planted and Moriarty is smugly, frustratingly aware of) captures in stark, haunting detail the image of John driving a knife through his leg, blank and unflinching.

Mycroft has to physically stop Sherlock from throwing everything to waste.

The next morning, he's stopped two streets away from Baker Street, pull-pushed into a car by polite-but-_toostrong _men and forced into the backseat next to Anthea or Andrea or whatever Mycroft's little pet's name is.

And so he watches from a cell of gold-red walls and silk sheets, a reluctant voyeur to John Watson's fall.

* * *

He's going to win.

He's going to save John, the way John always saved him.

He's going to win.

_Moriarty is at 221B again.  
MH_

It's not a Tuesday.

That night, ensconced in a room in Bathurst, Australia, he breaks two of the strings on his violin (G and E, symmetrical and impossible) and half the bow hairs.

* * *

He's almost done.

Two years and three months and he's almost done but it's _not fast enough_.

Mycroft still throws veiled insults his way via text or during the few phone conversations they have, but they're not the same, not now that nothing he says can do more to Sherlock than is already happening to him. Despite everything, Sherlock knows Mycroft cares about John, or at least respects (_respected_) him for who he is. He knows this frustrates Mycroft, that he can't do anything, can't make a move till Sherlock's finished and _I can't give up I have to win_-

_John._

_John._

* * *

Moriarty promised once, long ago (so long ago it's a dream, something he has to rummage around in his mind palace for) that he would burn Sherlock's heart right out of him.

"_I'm sorry_," John whispers into the empty apartment, "_I'm sorry, Sherlock_," and that's a last record for Mycroft's cameras as he clutches a box in his hands, a box of photographs and sweaters and Sherlock's scarf and a lonely gun for an ex-soldier. His clothing was moved the day before while John was at work, by faceless men and Moriarty grinning victory into the camera.

But it's not true. Moriarty hasn't burned the heart out of Sherlock.

It's just on _fire_, and it's a fire that isn't going to go out until John is safe.

Two years, nine months and twenty days; that's how long it's taken for Sherlock to realise, really realise, that anything about John isn't irrelevant, because if John isn't Sherlock's heart.

He _is _Sherlock, and Sherlock is going to save him.


	4. When Light Fades From Heart

Sherlock used to think that the most important thing was to bring down Moriarty; save John from being blackmail material, save John from getting hurt.

That's already happened now. There's no going back; no stopping that first night in their apartment, or the one in Sherlock's bed, or the time John turned around and _accepted_.

But there are two years of friendship, two years of real connection because Sherlock knows with blinding certainty that John loved – _loves _– Sherlock, just as he knows that he loves John.

And so he doesn't bother with subterfuge, doesn't bother with anything. Moriarty knows that Sherlock's slowly but surely destroyed his networks, destroyed everything while he's been occupied with tearing down John; and so when Mycroft sets off a diversion that they all know is a diversion, Moriarty has no choice but to leave the house that John now lives in with him, grandiose and spacious and as far from the crowded warmth of 221B as is possible.

Sherlock doesn't bother with subterfuge.

He knocks on the door, finds it open, enters.

John's eating breakfast in the kitchen, already looking Sherlock's way when he enters. He doesn't move, he _stills_, every bone and muscle and tendon locking in place and then reactivating, ready for flight or fight or anything.

"I'm home, John," Sherlock says quietly, and then he wishes he hadn't because there's _everything _in those three words.

Three years, nine months and twenty five days. Rage, impotent fury, sorrow, regret, guilt, fear, horror, love.

All.

John tilts his head slightly.

"Welcome home, Sherlock" he replies, his own bundle of overpowering grief and joy and despair joining the echoes that Sherlock has left in the spacious room.

* * *

They don't embrace. But somehow, Sherlock finds himself sunk to the floor next to John, just under the stove, fingers entwined despite the good foot of space between them.

"Did you beat him?"

Sherlock nods, knows that despite three years, nine months and twenty five days, John will still register the movement as easily as he always has, as though when Sherlock moves he does too, just like Sherlock fancies he's felt every stroke of Moriarty's fingers, every thrust of his hips.

"Hmm." John's fingers tighten slightly. "Good."

"Will you leave him?"

"No."

He expected that, but it hurts just the same.

"Alright."

For three torturous, blissful minutes, he lets himself absorb the warmth of John's skin, the solid strength of his muscles. And then he pushes himself to his feet, looks down at his former roommate. "I'd best be gone before Moriarty gets back."

John nods. "Fair enough. I'll see you out."

They don't say another word till they're at the door and Sherlock turns to face his best friend with nothing to say, nothing on his lips or in his mind at all.

The shorter man's forehead creases in a frown, frustrated but amused with a surprising lightness that warms Sherlock's heart in a way that nothing has in almost four years. "Bugger this."

And then he reaches up, yanks Sherlock down to meet his lips too, too briefly.

"Dinner tomorrow at that Italian place you took me to that first night?" John asks gruffly.

_What about Moriarty? _Sherlock means to ask. _It's not safe_, he wants to add. _You don't want me_, rises to his lips, a bitter accusation that he knows isn't true except in a very specific, slight way that still rends at his heart.

Instead, he says "Alright. Eight o'clock?"

"Don't be late," John smiles wearily, as though he's sure Sherlock will be late anyway, the way he always is.

He doesn't close the door till Mycroft's car has turned the car, Sherlock knows. Hates John for it, almost as much as he loves him.


End file.
